Prominent owner and breeder Josephine Abercrombie, 95, died peacefully at her home on Pin Oak Stud in Versailles, Ky., on Jan. 5, just 10 days shy of her birthday. “Josephine greeted every new day of her extraordinary life with the quest to see what came next,” an obituary released Wednesday evening described her. The only child of Texas oilman and Cameron Iron Works founder J. S. Abercrombie and Lillie Frank Abercrombie, Josephine Abercrombie spent her childhood in Texas. She began showing Saddlebreds at age 7, and competed at the national level. Her success on the horse-show circuit eventually led her to major competitions in Lexington and Louisville in Kentucky, where she fell in love with the area and with the sport of Thoroughbred racing. In 1949, she made her first foray into Thoroughbred racing when she purchased a group of yearlings with a partnership that included her father. Three years later, she and her father acquired 1,348 acres in Kentucky and named it Pin Oak. The original Pin Oak raised cattle and grew tobacco and other crops, in addition to raising Thoroughbreds. Abercrombie furthered the success of the latter operation, and in the 1980s designed and developed an additional 750 acres, a former hunting preserve, into a Thoroughbred nursery. Since its inception, Pin Oak has bred or/and raced more than 100 stakes winners. Its prominent homebreds campaigned in Abercrombie's blue and gray silks -- the colors of her alma mater Rice University -- include Canadian Horse of the Year Peaks and Valleys, Eclipse Award champion Laugh and Be Merry, and Grade 1 winners Confessional, Missed the Storm, and See How She Runs. Pin Oak was named the National Thoroughbred Breeder of the Year in 1995 by the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association. Abercrombie has been honored with the William T. Young Humanitarian Award and the Hardboot Award, both presented by the KTA/KTOB, for her beneficial work within the industry, and has received a number of other honors for her philanthropic work outside of racing. In 2018, she received another of the Thoroughbred industry’s most prestigious awards when she was named the Thoroughbred Club of America Honor Guest. “She’s a fascinating lady,” Keeneland vice president of sales Tony Lacy said of Abercrombie last fall. “She’s been a solid supporter of Keeneland racing and sales for a number of decades. Pin Oak has developed a really beautiful farm, great bloodlines. I’m lucky enough to be on the board of the Thoroughbred Club, and it was great to have her there, honored the way she should be. “She’s done so many things philanthropically – she started the Lexington School. She’s done so many good things – I think she was a boxing promoter at one point. . . . We need more people like her in the game." No immediate plans were announced for the Pin Oak property, where the 25-year-old stallion Broken Vow, a successful sire, and a handful of retired broodmares and racehorses remain as pensioners. Pin Oak had been downsizing its stock over the past several years as part of its strategic exit from commercial operations. Last September, the farm's mares and weanlings were dispersed in a special sale hosted by Fasig-Tipton at its Newtown Paddocks headquarters in Lexington. Led by the $650,000 mare Don’t Leave Me, 23 horses sold without reserve for a gross of $3,999,000, resulting in an average price of $173,870 and a median of $130,000. “The names Josephine Abercrombie and Pin Oak Stud are synonymous with excellence and quality,” Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning Jr. said. “Ms. Abercrombie is a pillar of the Thoroughbred industry and our local community. Her legacy will carry forward through the lives of the many people she impacted and these Thoroughbred families she cultivated and developed.” Standing alongside Broken Vow in 2021 at Pin Oak in its final full season of operations was homebred millionaire Alternation, the sire of Kentucky Oaks winner Serengeti Empress. That stallion has relocated to Darby Dan Farm to continue his career. Abercrombie is survived by two sons, George Anderson Robinson IV and Jamie Abercrombie Robinson, as well as grandchildren George Anderson Robinson V and Blair Abercrombie Robinson. Funeral arrangements are private. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to The Lexington School, Woodford Humane Society, or the Thoroughbred Charities of America.